Optics and Photonics Society of Iran

This paper analyzes the one dimensional shock wave created in a planar target by the ponderomotive force induced by very high laser irradiance and calculates the laser-induced relativistic shock wave parameters, such as compression, pressure, shock wave and particle flow velocities in the context of relativistic hydrodynamics. Its deduced that for solid targets and laser irradiance of about 2×10²⁴ W/cm², the shock wave velocity is larger than 50% of the speed of light, the shock wave compression is larger than 4 and the targets have a pressure of the order of 10¹⁵atm. The estimated temperature is larger than 1 MeV in energy units and therefore very excitation is expected in the shocked area. Lasers generated in future might allow investigating relativistic shock waves in the laboratory studied in this paper for the first time.